The taste of many food products severely diminishes during storage at either room temperature or during refrigeration. For instance, since seafood is extremely perishable in nature it must be eaten soon after catching or must be frozen to prevent spoilage. Only a few days after cooking, the meat of refrigerated lobsters and other crustaceans becomes rubbery in texture and their taste rapidly deteriorates from the desirable taste of fresh seafood. Another particularly difficult food to preserve is a fish fillet. Fresh fish fillets usually possess a shelf-life of only a few days after the fillet has been prepared. It would be extremely desirable to develop a process for preserving all types of food products by extending their shelf-lives while maintaining the desirable organoleptic qualities such as texture, taste and smell of the food products.
Proteins or prolamines, such as zein, have many utilities due to their amphoteric nature. Proteins have been used in in the past in a wide variety of applications including in the production of paper coatings, grease-resistant coatings, laminated boards, solid color prints, printing inks, food coatings, and microencapsulants. Prolamines are substantially insoluble in water and in alcohol but are soluble in alcohol-water mixtures.
It is an object of the present invention to produce a mixture of a stabilizing acid and a water soluble complex containing both a substantially water insoluble protein and a polysaccharide, the mixture displaying beneficial characteristics of both proteins and polysaccharides for use as a food preservative.
Another object of the present invention is the preservation of perishable food products, including seafood, against both weight loss and deterioration of desirable organoleptic qualities of the food occuring from periods of storage.
A further object of the present invention is to furnish a process for rejuvenating organoleptic properties of food that have deteriorated during storage.
These objectives are obtained by impregnating or coating the food products with a combination of an acid and a protein complex formed by impregnating or coating a polysaccharide with a substantially water-insoluble protein.
Still other objects and advantages of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part be apparent from the specification.